The Junto is a group history blog focusing on Early America, written and run by junior faculty and graduate students, which launched in December 2012. All seventeen of the regular contributors blog under their own name and apparently take turns with the daily tasks of tweeting, Facebook updates, and housekeeping posts. There are also regular posts from guest contributors, although it is unclear whether the guests posts are solicited or submitted.
The content of this group blog is varied and therefore useful to a wide audience of Early Americanists. Post topics include, but are not limited to, teaching and learning, digital research tools, book reviews, highlights of upcoming conferences, conference recaps. There is also a weekly post titled “This Week in Early America” which summarizes general and academic news, announces conferences, and links to interesting blog posts that readers might be interested in. The tone of this post, as well as many on the site, is conversational and light hearted. Do not be surprised to find a joke or pun at the end of a weekly update.
The Junto’s scholarly but lighthearted approach to Early American history is exemplified in their March Madness tournament, which pitted well-known books from the field agains one another, with votes by the blog readers. Conversations in the comments on these posts ranged general commentary typical to tournaments (“This is crazy! I think my votes lost every SINGLE time“) to serious discussion about the works themselves and what, specifically, constitutes a classic. With its variety and accessible tone, as well as its active social media presence, the Junto actively engages its audience, who regularly comment on posts or involve the official account, as well as contributors, in conversations on twitter and Facebook.
There is also a series of static pages listing resources, including calls for papers, conferences, special features from the blog, fellowships, a bibliography of recommended books, and useful links. While the calls for papers and conference announcements could have been handed as a category of posts which self-updated, the Junto has wisely decided to make these static pages which they manually update, allowing them to keep the information easily readable and organized. All of these resources are particularly useful to graduate students and junior faculty who may read the blog.
The site is a WordPress installation running the Quintus, theme; the historical-feeling colors of the blog are a built-in option of the theme itself. As with many Wordpress installs, the navigation is clear and easy to follow. The front page of the blog runs on a continuous scroll, similar to tumblr, this choice, combined with the decision to display on the first paragraph or two of each post on the main page, makes it easy to move quickly through the posts on the blog. Each contributor has a biography page, easily accessed from a drop-down in the main navigation.
Overall, the Junto is an accessible, easy to use, rich resource for scholars of Early America, be they faculty, graduate student, undergraduate, or even enthusiast. It will be interesting to see how the site develops as its contributors move forward in their own academic careers. Will the site grow and change with them or will they transfer it to the junior faculty and graduate students who follow in their footsteps?
